The present invention generally relates to an electrical connector, and more particularly to a modular connector assembly that utilizes a generic lead frame structure, from which multiple contact patterns may be formed.
Various connector designs exist today for different applications. Certain connector designs have been proposed to interconnect signal and power lines between a backplane and a printed circuit or daughter board. In many applications, industry standards have been developed to standardize and define certain aspects of board-to-board interfaces. One such standard is the Advanced Telecom Computing Architecture (Advanced TCA) standard which defines several physical and electrical characteristics of a board-to-board interface. In one aspect of the Advanced TCA standard, the backplane is divided into various zones, where at least one zone is defined for power and management, while a second zone is defined for data transport, and a third zone is reserved for user defined rear I/O. In general, Advanced TCA connectors are constructed as right angle connectors and may utilize pin or blade contacts to plug into a backplane or a mating connector.
Conventional Advanced TCA connectors include contacts having a variety of sizes, lengths and spacings that are somewhat dependent upon the connector performance requirements. The Advanced TCA standard defines the location of, and the spacing between, contacts in the power zone and in the signal zone of the connector. Conventional connectors that are configured for use with the Advanced TCA standard have been constructed by individually manufacturing and loading each signal contact and each power contact into the connector housing. The signal and power contacts are individually screw machined and plated. The contacts are individually manufactured into specific respective housing locations which creates an opportunity for improper insertion. The contacts may have different lengths and thus during the individual contact insertion process, a risk exists that the wrong contact is inserted into a contact position in the connector housing. Also, the conventional assembly process requires numerous loose contacts to be handled individually. Further, the contacts must be bent before or after they are loaded into the housing to form the right angle arrangement. Conventional manufacturing and assembly processes are slow, labor-intensive, costly and subject to error.
A need remains for an improved method of manufacturing an electrical connector that overcomes the problems discussed above and experienced heretofore.